insight text guide
Maude Ashton
The Mind of
a Thief
Patti Miller
Copyright © Insight Publications
First published in 2014.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Ashton, Maude, author.
Patti Miller’s The mind of a thief / Maude Ashton.
9781922243232 (paperback)
Insight text guide.
Includes bibliographical references.
Miller, Patti, 1954—Mind of a thief.
Miller, Patti, 1954—Criticism and interpretation.
Miller, Patti, 1954—Mind of a thief.
994.450049915
Printed in Australia.
contents
Character map
iv
Overview1
About the author
1
Synopsis2
Character summaries
3
Background & context
6
Genre, structure & language
11
Chapter-by-chapter analysis
15
Characters & relationships
34
Themes, ideas & values
43
Different interpretations
56
Questions & answers
62
Sample answer
69
References & reading
72
iv
CHARACTER MAP
Joyce Williams
Leads the
Traditional Families
claim and is an
influential figure
in the Wiradjuri
community.
Wayne Carr
Passionately
committed to
land rights for the
Wiradjuri.
friends
Evelyn Powell
Friend of Joyce’s
whose story
illustrates the way
Wiradjuri people
were once treated
in Wellington.
in a land dispute with
Rose Chown
Makes the first
post-Mabo land
claim in Australia
and eventually gains
a freehold title to
the land.
interviews
interviews
interviews
interviews
Patti Miller
A writer and teacher
who grew up in
Wellington.
The author and
narrator of the text.
interviews
Lee Thurlow
The town historian
and a strong
defender of the
importance of oral
history.
The Mind of a Thief
OVERVIEW
About the author
Patti Miller is an author and writing teacher, specialising in memoir and
autobiography. The Mind of a Thief is her most recent memoir, which
records her journey to discover her ancestry: Miller traces part of her
heritage back to her great-grandmother, who was rumoured to be an
Aborigine from the local Wiradjuri tribe. Miller combines her personal
history with the history of European settlement in the rural town of
Wellington, New South Wales, and with the present-day land claims
of the local Wiradjuri people. The setting – the town and surrounds of
Wellington – is as important as the people she discovers may have a
place in her family tree, since country and genealogy are inextricably
bound together in Aboriginal culture. Wellington was also the site of the
first land rights claim following the Mabo decision, and Miller’s search
for her family history is woven into the larger fabric of the Wiradjuri
quest for the land they belong to.
In 2011, just before writing this book, Miller gave a talk about art and
writing in relation to identity and the landscape. Miller’s brother Tim,
who also has a role in the text, is a landscape artist, and he shares her
interest in Wiradjuri country. She writes of their journeys:
How can I talk about the vastness of our individual discoveries
as we explored the history and people and landscape of the
Wiradjuri where we grew up? For me it resulted in a booklength memoir, The Mind of a Thief; for Tim it resulted in two
exhibitions in Sydney in 2010; for both of us it took over our
lives for a couple of years.
After ranging around the territory for a while, I decided to find
my way in through a question that one of the Wiradjuri Elders
asked me a while ago – ‘Do ya have any blackfella in ya?’,
because in a way, that was the starting point for both of us. Were
we European outsiders, or did we have a deeper connection?
1
2
How do European modes of expression, writing and figurative
art relate to the landscape and the way of life of the Wiradjuri?
(Varuna 2011)
Synopsis
In this memoir, Miller travels back to her home town, Wellington in New
South Wales, to discover more about her background. As an adult, she
recognises that Wellington and the area surrounding it is Wiradjuri land,
although she had not realised this when she was growing up on her
family’s farm. Through a number of visits to Wellington, some interviews
with key Wiradjuri people and careful research into the white settlement
of Wellington, Miller finds her ancestry may be tied more closely to the
Wiradjuri people than she thought.
Miller first meets the Wiradjuri women when she offers to help them
write their own ‘stories’ (p.1). During this meeting, she is introduced to
Wiradjuri elder Joyce Williams, who tells her that they are cousins who
share a common ancestor. Using this incident as a framing device, Miller
begins to trace her history by threading backwards and forwards through
time, focusing on how her identity has been shaped by her sense of place
and her love of narrative. Miller describes her childhood on the farm on
the fringes of Wellington and her move from the Blue Mountains, outside
of Sydney, to Kings Cross, in the centre of the city. It is from here, two
years after the move and prompted by a dream, that she makes her trips
back to Wellington.
Wellington is a divided place, with an Aboriginal settlement, Nanima,
on its outskirts, adjacent to the Town Common. Miller presents a fractured
picture of the people of Wellington Valley: the Wiradjuri and the whites
have different stories about who is related to whom, there is some petty
crime that is always attributed to the Aborigines and there is a rift in
the Wiradjuri community over who is entitled to represent the whole
tribe. Nevertheless, Miller creates a sense that, although there is conflict
and ambiguity in the relationships in the town, each individual’s story
is authentic and contributes to an understanding of the complexities of
relationships, memory and justice.
The Mind of a Thief
Running parallel to Miller’s investigations of her background is her
effort to understand the first post-Mabo land claim, which was lodged
over land in Wellington. Miller attempts to understand the competing
claims on the Town Common from two separate parts of the Wiradjuri
tribe, represented by Joyce Williams and Rose Chown, and the conflict
that has been created because of these claims. In trying to recover the
land, both Joyce and Rose are caught up in white man’s law, which Miller
describes as ‘an elaborate, wiry construction … mostly invisible to most
of the people involved, determining the validity of their every move’
(p.160). The text primarily explores the claims of Joyce’s group as they
attempt to overturn the ruling that gave ownership, perhaps wrongly, of
the Common to Rose’s group.
Character summaries
Patti Miller
Miller is the narrator of this memoir and its central figure. Her quest to
discover her family history shapes the text and drives its central themes:
how we know who we are and whether we can belong to a land that has
other claims on it. Miller was born 1954 near Wellington, New South
Wales, and she grew up there, later moving to Sydney.
Don Miller
Don, Miller’s father, sells his farm near Wellington and grieves for its loss
for the rest of his life.
Joyce Williams
Joyce leads the elders of the Wiradjuri group. She is the first and
most important contact that Miller makes in her interviews with the
people of Wellington. Joyce tells Miller that they are related through
Miller’s father’s Wiradjuri grandmother, Rosina. This important family
connection allows Miller to meet the other participants in the land
disputes, but because Joyce and Rose are at opposite sides of the
argument, the connection with Joyce makes it almost impossible for
Miller to talk with Rose.
3
4
Rose Chown
Rose is an invisible force in the narrative until she makes her appearance
in the final chapters. By delaying Rose’s appearance and allowing her
to be the subject of speculation and, at times, anger, Miller increases
the suspense surrounding her encounter with Rose. Miller has seen
her in footage and in pictures accompanying newspaper reports, and
she has the impression that Rose is a big, imposing woman; but when
she meets her, Rose is small in stature. Her strength in fighting for the
Common has been extraordinary, but the resistance that she faces from
the elders and the toll of such a long fight seem to have defeated her.
Our sympathy for Rose grows at the end of the memoir, and we are
asked to revise our earlier opinions of this political antagonist to Joyce.
Rosina May
Rosina is the Wiradjuri mother of Don Miller, Patti Miller’s father. Rosina
is also the sister of John May, Joyce’s grandfather. Joyce tells Miller at their
first meeting, ‘Ya dad’s grandma and my grandad are brother an’ sister.
So me an’ you, we’re cousins’ (p.4). Rosina is no longer alive and does
not appear in the memoir directly, but the connection to the Wiradjuri
people that Rosina represents helps Miller in researching her identity and
that of the Wiradjuri.
Bill Riley
Bill’s interviews with Miller predate those of Joyce and Rose: when
Miller was a student, she began a project on the lives and history of the
Wiradjuri people, and Bill was her main interview subject. Bill is aligned
with Joyce, who is his sister, and the elders in the dispute over land.
Wayne Carr
Wayne is an activist on behalf of the Wiradjuri Council of Elders. He
brings energy and commitment to the fight. As a young man, he had an
identity crisis, left Wellington for Sydney and, in his words, ‘went berserk’
(p.227). Joyce telephoned him, and Wayne came back to Wellington to
join in the struggle for land rights. The goal of native title for the Wiradjuri
reinforces his sense of identity and his Aboriginality.
The Mind of a Thief
Lee Thurlow
Lee is the local history researcher in Wellington; he has ‘everything
written up’ (p.123). Lee is at first suspicious of Miller’s motives in probing
the land rights dispute, but after meeting her he becomes a major source
of information.
5
6
BACKGROUND & CONTEXT
The Mind of a Thief is set in contemporary New South Wales, and Miller’s
motivation for writing it comes as much from wanting to explore the first
post-Mabo land claim as it does from her search for greater meaning in
her life. Miller is a teacher of writing, particularly memoir, and this text
takes her into territory that is both familiar and strange to her. In 2013, The
Mind of a Thief won the NSW Community & Regional History Prize in the
NSW Premier’s History Awards, was shortlisted in the Western Australian
Premier’s Book Awards and was longlisted for the Nita B Kibble Literary
Awards for Women Writers and the inaugural Stella Prize.
The Mabo decision
The Mabo decision was a landmark in the history of white and
Indigenous peoples in Australia. In 1992, the High Court of Australia
decided that the Meriam people, whose spokesperson was Eddie
Mabo, held a native title over part of their traditional lands. This ruling
was a recognition that Australia was ‘settled’ before the arrival of the
Europeans, and it established a precedent for all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islanders to have their native title recognised under Australian
law. Australia was no longer the terra nullius that the early white settlers
had claimed it to be on arrival; its traditional owners were now able to
claim the title to native lands.
During the Mabo case and its aftermath, feelings surrounding native
title were heightened for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
While the Mabo decision was lauded as being a step in the right direction,
there also existed, and perhaps still exists, a great deal of uncertainty and
even fear surrounding the ideas of property, ownership and identity in
Indigenous communities. The Mind of a Thief explores this in the context
of Wellington.